[av_heading heading=’Louis Wain cat paintings and an allegorical Cedric Morris work appear at Lyon and Turnbull Oct. 26-27′ tag=’h1′ style=” subheading_active=” show_icon=” icon=’ue800′ font=’entypo-fontello’ size=” av-desktop-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” subheading_size=” av-desktop-font-size=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” icon_size=” av-desktop-font-size-1=” av-medium-font-size-1=” av-small-font-size-1=” av-mini-font-size-1=” color=” custom_font=” subheading_color=” seperator_color=” icon_color=” margin=’,,35px,’ av-desktop-margin=” av-desktop-margin_sync=’true’ av-medium-margin=” av-medium-margin_sync=’true’ av-small-margin=’,,20px,’ av-mini-margin=” av-mini-margin_sync=’true’ headline_padding=” headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-desktop-headline_padding=” av-desktop-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-medium-headline_padding=” av-medium-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-small-headline_padding=” av-small-headline_padding_sync=’true’ av-mini-headline_padding=” av-mini-headline_padding_sync=’true’ padding=’10’ av-desktop-padding=” av-medium-padding=” av-small-padding=” av-mini-padding=” icon_padding=’10’ av-desktop-icon_padding=” av-medium-icon_padding=” av-small-icon_padding=” av-mini-icon_padding=” link=” link_target=” title_attr=” id=” custom_class=” template_class=” av_uid=’av-lnddbw6m’ sc_version=’1.0′ admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]

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LONDON — Appealing to feline fanatics everywhere, two outstanding works by the great cat painter Louis Wain (1860-1939) come to auction this month. Both works have been in the same family collection since at least 1915 and have been unseen for more than a century. They have estimates of £10,000-£15,000 ($12,200-$18,300) each as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s Modern Made auction in London on Friday, October 27.

Mirth at the sometimes-bizarre behavior of the domesticated cat is not just the stuff of 21st-century social media. At the turn of the 20th century, the illustrations of Louis Wain were virtually inescapable. His world of anthropomorphized cats did much to normalize the ownership of cats as pets and was so popular that he wrote and illustrated more than 100 children’s books. His troubled life story — success, tragedy and failing mental health — was dramatized on the big screen in the 2021 film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Although Wain’s profile has recently been catapulted into popular culture, he has long been admired in the cat-collecting sphere on both sides of the Atlantic. The works offered in the sale are from the peak of his career, created around 1904 in pen, ink, watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper and board.

Hockey depicts a ferociously competitive cat hockey match, with the viewer plunged into the thick of the action. It is one of Wain’s most recognizable and popular images, having been one of the most widely published postcards of 1904-05. To Be Let Unfurnished is another multi-subject picture: a plotline unfolds as some 18 felines, young and old, assemble outside a disused property.

Bonhams set a new auction record for Louis Wain in March of this year when A Highway Robbery, offered in a Knightsbridge auction of Modern British and Irish Art, took £30,000 ($36,600).

Lyon & Turnbull’s mixed-discipline Modern Made sale, displayed in London’s Mall Galleries, is preceded on Thursday, October 26 with a themed pictures auction titled Avant Garde.

This 54-lot offering is headlined by an allegorical bird and flower painting created by the artist-plantsman Cedric Morris (1889-1982) in the shadow of World War II. The 1938 oil Crisis, not seen in public for more than half a century, has an estimate of £150,000-£250,000 ($182,700-$304,600).

In this large-scale canvas, Morris combined two of his passions – ornithology and horticulture – to comment on European politics. The central image shows a tree-like plant populated by a menagerie of British birds, from the shy Goldcrest perched at the top to the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker at its base. Using the language of flowers, Morris represents pride (Crinum Lilies), inconstancy (Evening Primroses), health, wisdom and good nature (Verbascum) while the crocuses at the lower center signify ‘my best days are past.’ As all these flowers are late summer or early autumn blooms, it would suggest the time of year Morris created the painting. It coincides with the signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938.

When Morris applied the date ‘38’ to the still-wet impasto at the lower left of the work, he was enjoying an especially favorable period in his life. He had left London’s avant-garde art world behind and moved with his life partner and fellow artist Arthur Lett-Haines to The Pound farmhouse in Higham, England. The East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, which the pair established in 1937, was welcoming its first students and would shortly move to the rambling pink manor house Benton End in nearby Hadleigh.

Morris sent Crisis for inclusion in the 1939 International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The picture was later acquired from Morris by his friends, the advertising executive Robert ‘Bobby’ Bevan and his wife Natalie Bevan, the artist and muse. They had first met Morris and Lett-Haines in the late 1920s and in 1947 moved to Boxted, England.

Morris’s significance to the Modern British canon has been reassessed in recent years, leading to a dramatic increase in the prices achieved for his paintings. The current auction record of £160,000 (about $195,100) was set at Sworders in October 2019 for the 1932 painting Foxgloves.

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Louis Wain, ‘Hockey,’ estimated at £10,000-£15,000 ($12,200-$18,300) at Lyon & Turnbull.
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Louis Wain, ‘To Be Let Unfurnished,’ estimated at £10,000-£15,000 ($12,200-$18,300) at Lyon & Turnbull.
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Marcel Breuer for Isokon, set of three nesting tables, estimated at £3,000-£5,000 ($3,660-$6,100) at Lyon & Turnbull.
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Serge Chermayeff, pair of Plan chairs, estimated at £1,500-£2,500 ($1,830-$3,050) at Lyon & Turnbull.
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Cedric Morris’s allegorical painting ‘Crisis,’ estimated at £150,000-£250,000 ($182,700-$304,600) at Lyon & Turnbull.
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